The Science of Holding Hands
by Illustriousgiraffe
Summary: "Maybe it wouldn't be so damn annoying if he could actually feel what he was supposed to be feeling, maybe he would better understand his flat mate (because no other ordinary people really mattered) better if he could decipher these strange things that seemed to plague normal people." No slash, unless you want to read it that way.


**Hello all! This is my Second Sherlock fic.**

**I read a lot of fics where Sherlock reacts to John getting hurt, and although I love the feels and the stories, I can never imagine Sherlock being all emotional all at once. I always think about the scene in Baskerville where Sherlock's body is reacting to the fear but his mind isn't so here is my take on what Sherlock's reaction to John getting hurt would be.**

**I don't own Sherlock in any way shape or form except in my imagination.**

**Enjoy!**

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Sherlock Holmes sat looking quite disheveled in a ratty red hospital chair which had been sitting in the same exact spot for 3 and a half years, but that was besides the point, as were most of his deductions, it was just an automatic process. The real problem, which Sherlock was admittedly avoiding by deducing useless things, was that John was forcing him to sit in this germy red abomination of a chair.

It wasn't that John had verbally expressed a desire for the detective to sit in the sad excuse for a seat; it was the army doctor's actions that tied Sherlock in his current location. John had stupidly walked in front of the consulting detective to stop a bullet that Sherlock could have easily avoided, at least if all his calculations had been correct. But John had to go and spoil it all and do something that Sherlock, with his vast mind, hadn't thought of. Which is why Sherlock found himself tethered to his friend's bedside, wondering just how he had missed the possibility of John ending up with a bullet wound in his shoulder.

Sherlock had barely moved since the insufferable doctors had let him in (why couldn't more doctors be like John?) after he claimed he was 'family', it wasn't too much of a lie, they lived together, that was what families did wasn't it? Why couldn't he understand such things? He had a wealth of knowledge that was seemingly infinite to people around him, yet he could understand one of the most basic parts of life. It irked him to no end that something so simple could be so slippery, he understood the concept, the motions, the physical signs, but he couldn't quite grasp why it all mattered.

That was what had left him so confused sitting by John's bedside. His body was reacting to the situation, but his mind refused to. His hands were slightly unstable and he felt like jello on a warm day, but his mind was racing. And in the back of it all he could feel just a twinge of a foreign emotion, a feeling that eerily matched the fear his body was displaying. Before Sherlock had a chance to analyze what was nagging at him the hand of a woman (recently divorced, lesbian, drunk, ah, it was Harry) collided with his arm and shook harshly.

"Can you even hear me?" She said to him. Oh, so she had been talking before, how trivial.

He acknowledged her presence with a drawn out "hm" and continued to stare at the tiled floor.

"You John's flat mate?" Harry asked. They had never met, John had been unable to see how his irritable alcoholic sister and a compulsive genius sociopath could get along without causing some sort of national crisis. Even so, Sherlock had no trouble recognizing Harry.

"You must be Harry."

"How would you know?" She asked in a voice that was just a tad too loud. She was obviously intoxicated to some mild extent.

"I don't _know, _I _see,_" he explained drolly.

She made a John-like humph and looked at him angrily, "You didn't answer my question. 'Re you Sherlock?"

"I am," no need to waste words.

He was genuinely surprised (something that did not happen often) when he felt a fist connect with his cheek. He rolled his head back from where it had been misplaced by the force of the punch and looked at Harry, not letting the dull pain in his cheek deter him.

He didn't quite understand what the punch was for; he figured it had something to do with one of those elusive feeling things. His suspicions were confirmed (as they always were) when Harry started to speak again.

"This is all your fault!" She shouted. It was a good thing Mycroft had gotten them into a private room because Sherlock was pretty sure Harry could wake the dead with her squawking. "You and your detective games could have gotten my brother killed! He could still die!"

"I am aware," Sherlock said, his voice close to a growl.

This just earned a rather disbelieving stare. "You're aware? You're aware! An idiot could see that he is dying! Do you even care?"

Sherlock wasn't very sure of what he should say, did he care? His shaking hands said that he did, his lethargic body said that he did, but his mind, the part that mattered most, couldn't seem to capture the emotion well enough, he just felt sort of . . .empty.

"Obviously not! I don't know what he sees in you! You are a selfish bastard! Can't even decide if you are sad or not, lemmi help you out there, if you have to _think_ about it, you don't _feel_ it, " She seethed.

She collapsed into the other, older, chair. Her head in one hand, her emotions and the alcohol were finally getting to her. The adrenaline of hearing that her brother was injured would be wearing off now, and Sherlock anticipated tears in three, two, one . . .

A sob escaped the woman in question, making Sherlock inwardly smirk, no need to look like more of an insensitive moron than he already did, not that he cared what others thought.

After a moment of undignified sniffs, snuffs, and a sad amount of blubbering, Harry managed to get a few choked words out. "You know . . . He hasn't told me much about you, just that you're brilliant. He do-doesn't say, but I can tell how much he admires you, just by the way he talks. He thinks you're a modern day ei-einstein, that there's not a thing you don't know. I-I don't see it. How . . .can you just sit there? Are you even sad?"

"I don't know," He admitted, he could have lied, could have begun to cry and act as though he was as shaky as his hands were, but he felt inclined to tell the truth. This seemed a good opportunity to at last be able to grasp one of his wandering emotions.

She scoffed, though it sounded more like a cough, hiccup, and sob all in one, and looked between her fingers to glare at Sherlock.

"Can't you see that-that he cares about you, he's never really had many friends, never any close ones. I don't know w-why in hell he would choose y-you . . . of all people." She said between gasps. "How c-can he be so loyal, and you be so . . . cold?" She started sobbing violently once more.

When Sherlock gave no indication that he would respond, Harry broke her sobs once more to tell him off. "You're heartless," she rasped out.

Her comment brought back memories from the night at the pool, so he thought it appropriate to answer in a similar fashion. "Yes, I've been informed so."

She simply stared at him with her brows furrowed, just adding more atrocity to the hideous (in Sherlock's opinion) face that crying produced in the first place, there was another reason to avoid emotions altogether. Though despite his slight disgust in such a display he found that his own eyes held more moisture than they normally did, indicating that his body was betraying him once more.

Maybe it wouldn't be so damn annoying if he could actually _feel_ what he was supposed to be feeling, maybe he would better understand his flat mate (because no other ordinary people really mattered) better if he could decipher these strange things that seemed to plague normal people.

As if on cue, Harry scooted (more like awkwardly dragged) her chair closer to John's bed. Leaning her elbows on the mattress and reaching up to stroke John's brow.

This gave Sherlock a moment to look over John, something he had refused to do since the injured doctor had been whisked away by the ambulance. The doctor had bandages (hastily applied by two, maybe three, doctors by the looks of it) running from his shoulder to under the opposite armpit. His chest was also wrapped in pristine white bandages, he looked so . . . un-John.

It was so unnerving that Sherlock couldn't even call it anything but 'un-John'. Sherlock, the man who most likely knew every word in the Oxford English Dictionary could not think of an adjective to describe the state of his friend. John was a fighter, a motivated man, not one to be lying down, possibly dying. All Sherlock could think of it as was wrong, it was all just wrong, nothing fit, Sherlock in a way refused to believe it, it was impossible for John to look un-John, he was John after all how could he be un-himself?

The detective nearly smiled at how ridiculous his thought process had become. But something stopped him, he felt different, different enough not to give a slight smirk to no one in particular. His mind felt . . . heavy, and full. Looking at John, at his oddly peaceful face that contrasted so greatly with the mounds of bandages and wires on him, made the curly-haired detective oddly upset. Not overly angry, just a bit ruffled. Irked that he had not been able to protect his friend, for that was what John was, or the closest thing he had to one. And Harry had made it clear that John cared. So the real question was, did he?

Of course he cared. He depended on John, he actually liked John, which was more than he could say about most people. The doctor was one of the few people Sherlock didn't mind being around. But those were just selfish traits that meant he tolerated John, meant that John was just there to compliment and admire him. Was that caring? Sherlock hadn't felt so confused since Mycroft had tried to explain to him why he couldn't be a pirate.

Sherlock looked back at the Watson siblings. Harry had one of John's hands clasped between her own, slightly smaller hands. She was still sniffling and every once in a while Sherlock could make out the distinctive noise of a tear plopping down on the linen sheets.

Sherlock felt a sharp pain in his stomach, realizing belatedly that it was jealousy, he wished, maybe just for this one night that he could feel what Harry felt. It was what John deserved, a friend who cared. Sherlock didn't deserve a friend like John and John deserved better, so Sherlock was going to do the logical thing, leave.

Sherlock got up from his seat, smoothing out his belstaff coat and flipping up the collar, wishing John was awake to scold him. He made it to the door in two strides, but stopped when the broken voice of Harriet Watson put a wall up in front of him.

"Where-Where are you going?" She managed to say rather coherently.

Sherlock turned on his heel and looked down at the distressed woman. "Away."

"W-What?" She asked rather angrily.

"You obviously heard me." He told her.

She glared at him, John's face flashing across her features. It was rather disturbing how similar they looked.

The tall man made a move to leave but was stopped once more by John's incessant sister.

"You can't!"

"And, why not Ms. Watson?"

"Because he's your friend, and you owe him that much." She seemed to want to say more judging by the incline of her head and the slight part of her lips, but was interrupted by a hiccup.

"And do you think he deserves a _friend_ with 'no heart'?" Sherlock asked in a dangerously low voice.

"No, I think John deserves a friend who, even if he has no feelings at all, at least acts like he cares. He deserves a friend who doesn't run away like a coward!" She half-yelled half-sobbed.

Sherlock just stared at her, wondering probably for the millionth time in his life what it was like having such a puny little mind, she had misinterpreted his leave-taking completely, how thick was she? Sherlock was going to leave because he didn't feel worthy of such a good friend and Harry thought he was leaving because he didn't care about John. Absolutely preposterous!

"I care about my _friends_ in a way you could never begin to understand!" Sherlock all but shouted, had he really just said that? Was it the truth?

"Well it doesn't seem like it." She said, looking back at her brother.

"Caring is not just a physical display of affection, any good actor can do that. Affection is not measured by hugs and kisses," He said, pulling his 'round and round the garden like a teddy bear' face, "It is the standing the person holds in your mind. It is what they outrank enough so that you can think of them. And most importantly of all, Caring is _not_ an advantage." he rattled out in his spitfire deduction-voice.

Harry sniffed, but this time it was more of an 'I know what's going on here' sniff. She nodded her head to herself a few times, biting her tongue in thought.

"I get it," she said, a slight laugh of disbelief lingering above her words, "you're afraid. You've already detached yourself, in case-If he dies!"

Sherlock was about to protest, but Harry would not let him.

"I know what you're doing. You are pushing him away-keeping him at an emotional distance so that you won't have to suffer if you lose him. And no matter how much John tries to just be a good friend, you always reject him in some way or another. He is always trying to get closer and you are always backing away! Do you know what it would do to him if you were in that hospital bed?" She hollered, getting up from her chair and planting herself right in front of the taller man. "Do you?!"

Inebriated or not, Harry Watson was a rather intelligent woman, guess it ran in the family, because she was telling Sherlock truths that he had been refusing to acknowledge, some that he hadn't even realized had existed. For even if he tried Sherlock would always have that automatic coping mechanism, he had discarded feelings when he was just a boy, too much confusion and pain in them, and resorted to using his logic to stay above such things since.

The detective bowed his head, partly in shame partly in thought.

The two stood there for several moments without eye contact, two trees rooted to the smooth tiled floor. Harry eventually slipped her roots from the ground and collapsed once more next to John.

Sherlock was not one to admit defeat (not verbally at least) so after he felt that he had stood there for an adequate amount of time he too dragged his feet over to his chair, but instead of sitting down he wrapped his long fingers around the back and dragged it silently to the other side of John's bed. He sat slowly and elegantly, leaning forward with his fingers steepled beneath his chin.

He stared over John's prone form to examine the way Harry was holding his companion's hand. Her left hand lay palm up with John's in a similar position on top; her right hand was loosely grasping the edges of her brother's larger hand. Her pinkie and ring fingers were bent slightly and her pointer and middle extended while her thumb made small circles on the side of John's lifeless hand. A useless gesture, it wasn't like he could feel it, he was under the influence of many, many painkillers after all.

It took Sherlock all of 5 seconds to realize that he wasn't the only one staring. Harry's brown eyes were tracking his own silver one's as he looked up at her.

"You know you that's not going to help you," she said softly. "The way you hold his hand doesn't matter, the angle of your pinkie doesn't do a damn thing you dolt."

He looked at her awkwardly and then at John's free hand. Harry's eyes were alight with interest, and apprehension.

Slowly, shakily, Sherlock took his right hand and slipped his skeletal fingers underneath his friend's limp hand. He gripped it softly, reveling in the warmth it held, warmth that told him that his best friend was still alive.

Sherlock did feel it then, like his emotions fit him finally. Just for a moment he felt as disheveled and formless as his body displayed he was. It was a hideous feeling, but at the same time he found a strange joy within himself, he cared about John Watson! He cared about someone enough to feel the tears that were balancing on the edge of his eyelids, enough to want to curl into a ball and let them fall, enough to want to hate himself for all eternity, and it may have sounded crazy but it was the best feeling (the first feeling) he had had in a long time.

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**Please let me know how plausible you think this is and/or what you thought. Reviews follows and favs are appreciated and make me happy!**


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